


when the time came and everyone forgot what they knew

by spock



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Mythology, Bickering, Bond of Choice, Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, Immortality, M/M, Non-Linear Narrative, Norse Mythology - Freeform, References to Norse Religion & Lore, Russian Mythology, Slice of Life, Soul Bond, Trope Inversion, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-25
Updated: 2015-01-25
Packaged: 2018-03-06 11:30:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3132812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spock/pseuds/spock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the sort of thing that Nick would have to ask Odin about — that Alex would have to ask Perun about — in order to get a definitive answer, but neither he nor Alex have been in touch with anyone from their past for millennia now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when the time came and everyone forgot what they knew

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oanja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oanja/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [无人传诵的神话后篇](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3687669) by [andelia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/andelia/pseuds/andelia)



It's always been a running _thing_ between the two of them, arguing over just who came first. They'd passed the point where they’d been together as a unit longer than they’d ever existed separately ages ago, which made it just that much harder to keep track of how long it’d truly been.

Christianity's advent did nothing to help them on that front, seeing as it altered their respective histories far greater than the passage of time ever had, twisting and repurposing their existence to fit into a narrative so far removed from what the prayers of those who had conjured Alex and him up originally intended. The realities of their roles are lost, forever, even to those who still pray to them from time to time; though the realities of time have always been lost on Alex and him, because of what little use they've ever had for it, living so far outside of its grasp as they do, so maybe it's only fair that time lost track of them too.

Nick supposes it's the sort of thing that he'd have to ask Odin about — that Alex would have to ask Perun about — in order to get a definitive answer, but neither he nor Alex have been in touch with anyone from their past for millennia now.

They're two of the same, except not, and that's always been the problem.

 

⌁

 

Nick is constantly forced to readjust Alex's jersey on the bench, untucking it from the back of Alex's pants so that he doesn't take a stupid penalty. He's been playing with an edge all night, toeing the line, and Nick knows that the refs are practically salivating at the thought of Alex slipping up just the tiniest bit so that they can send his ass to the box.

Alex shifts slightly, his mouth titled in Nick’s direction while still keeping his eyes trained on the chances Beags' line are creating out on the ice. The crowd surrounding them is fired up, not a single person in the stands who isn’t balanced on the edge of their seat, waiting for the two-two split to be broken, hollering at the top of their lungs, as if that's the magic ingredient that'll make sure the score goes up in the Caps' favor. Nick loves it.

Alex has to half-shout to be heard as he says, "Why you must do this?" He tips his head back, nodding to where Nick’s just finished pulling out Alex’s jersey for the eighth time.

"They got Capone on tax evasion," Nick shouts back. He hears Trotz's startled laugh, just to his left, and then one of the Islanders' kids banks a shot off the boards too hard, sending the puck into his own bench. They're due for a tv break; the guys on the ice skate over to the bench before the linesman has even finished blowing his whistle to signal the end of play.

"Rule was invented just to spite me," Alex says. With play stopped, he has an attentive audience for his bullshit, and Nick knows that he won't be able to resist from stirring up some shit. "Anti-Russian rule. Just like embellishment shame is meant to punish Swedes."

Nick’s smart enough not to take the bait, but Willy's too earnest for his own good. "Pops' never dived in his entire fucking life," he's got his body tossed halfway across Nick's lap so that he can get up in Alex's face.

"Why you stand up for him and not me? This is anti-Ovi! Why am I not called papa too?" Alex eyes dart around the bench, eventually zeroing in on Kuzi. "Zhenya, you call me daddy from now on."

Kuzi pulls the _worst_ kind of face, but he’s saved from answering as the ice crew skates off and the refs wave at the benches, signaling for puck drop. Trotz taps his knuckles on the back of Alex's helmet and just like that, Alex hops over the boards, Nick and Willy following him to the faceoff circle.

It takes more than half of the second period, but they do finally break the tie, Nick feeding the puck to Willy from across the ice. He watches as Willy powers his way past three of Islanders’ guys before passing to Alex, who fires it into the back of the net, easy as breathing.

Nick and Willy reach Alex at about the same time, sandwiching him into a hug and getting "Who's your daddy?!" shouted into their faces for their trouble.

 

⌁

 

Alex wasn't born, not in the way Nick was.

All gods exist because mortals wished them to, and Nick's people wanted their gods to have history — to have legacy — so Nick came with a mother and father, and brothers too, though Nick had always been Odin's favorite. The bright son, the _light_ son, most gracious and fairest-spoken of all Æsir, moreso even than Odin himself. Nick spent most of his childhood feeling like a contrast to his brother, who, despite Nick’s title, always seemed to shine so much brighter than Nick did, in spite of the fact that Nick's brother was loud and brash and hot-tempered — or possibly, because of it — their people still loved him; their father did as well, if not begrudgingly so. Compared to him, Nick felt meek, inconsequential.

Still, their's wasn't a religion based in dualism, and Nick had been expected to stand on his own, to exist in singularity, no matter how much that voice inside of him insisted that he wasn't complete, that something was missing, a piece that he'd need to finally become whole.

 

⌁

 

Living in the public eye means that they have to do things differently from what they've always done in the past.

There's no advantage to being a god in their line of work; neither he nor Alex are anything close to being gods of athleticism, aren't patron saints of hockey or anything else, so they work just as hard as anyone else at the game.

Immortality is a given, but injuries are trickier. Nick is protected from many things, but his mother hadn't had the chance to force man-made ice, composite sticks, vulcanized rubber, or even the latest generation of players to give a vow never to harm him, so injuries impact him just as often as they do his mortal teammates, and Alex is more or less in the same position. They take their lumps as they’re doled out, patient in their knowledge that nothing will keep them on the sidelines forever.

Mostly it's the aging, and their inability to do so, that would give them away. It's not something that they even have to worry about yet, not with how young they're supposed to be, but once Alex gets enamored with an idea he's fucking hopeless at resisting it, and so he starts turning his hair gray way earlier than he needs to, if for no other reason than just because he can.

Nick still isn't sure if he likes it or not. Mostly he's just glad that Alex has gone back to his old hairstyle: face scruffy, with his nearly too-long hair curling around his ears.

"Gray hair," Alex says, like clockwork, as they walk out of the showers together, towel hung around his shoulders as he drips all over the dressing room carpet, his cock dangling free between his legs, framed by a thatch of hair that's just as salt & pepper as the mess on his head, scaring the rookies. "Is good?" Nick ignores him, wondering when Ovi actually went through with his threats and greyed up his pubes.

Burt's got his gaze trained on Alex's dick in a wide-eyed stare; Nick raises a hand to shield the rookie's eyes. "Stop traumatizing my kids," Nick hisses at Alex. "Go flash that stuff at Kuzi; it's not welcome over here."

"I don't want to see!" Kuzi cries, and somehow that gets all the guys started in on sharing their craziest _My Adventures with Ovi's Dick_ stories, regaling for the rookies and new guys alike, who all seem to be torn between admiration and dread.

For every story a teammate has, Alex shares two of his own, some of them based around shit he and Nick had gotten into hundreds of years ago, modernized enough to sound like they could’ve happened during the first few seasons of their careers. It brings back memories Nick had long forgotten, and he's laughing as much as anyone else, interrupting Alex from time to time to correct one small detail or another.

Everyone's practically in tears by the time they're finished getting dressed. It's a given that they're all going to go out for lunch together, the mood too good for them to want to split up. They've only got a few more days of peace and quiet before the EPIX crew descends on them; Nick remembers how stilted things felt the last time they had cameras lurking around for a Classic, so he wants to enjoy this easiness while it lasts, knows it probably won't happen again until the new year's arrived.

He's in a good enough mood that he agrees to let Alex drive without much of a fuss, sliding into the passenger seat and making sure to do up his seat belt right away.

"Gray hair is good, yes?” Alex starts up again as they pull out of the rink's parking lot and onto the street. “I see you staring when you think I'm not looking.”

 

⌁

 

The people who wished Alex up were _all_ about duality, but had little use for equality, for balance, and it was Alex who got the short end of his particular arrangement. He seemed to exist just for the sake of existing, the dark that came as a result of the light. Alex is old, unimportant; the only reason for his name’s vague remembrance now is because of its ties to his counterpart, though Belobog had even less use for Alex than their worshipers did, and so Alex wandered.

The one kindness that had been gifted to Alex was that his existence was taken for granted, an afterthought. That systematic neglect is the only reason he and Nick managed to do what they did, after all.

⌁

It feels like he's only just closed his eyes when Alex shakes him awake one night, breathing hard and sweaty enough that the tackiness of his skin is obvious even in the dark of their bedroom.

"Prophecy or just a dream?" Nick mumbles, accent thick. His right eye refuses to open, so he’s forced to squint up at Alex's face with only his left. Alex doesn't say anything, just keeps gasping wetly, so Nick opens his arms and lets Alex settle his ridiculous body on top of Nick's much more reasonably sized one. He runs his hand through Alex's damp hair and says, "Seriously, though: did you prophesy?"

"I don't fucking know," Alex mutters into Nick's chest, which means that he's moved on from being upset and is now pissed, too mad to get a hold on whatever he saw, just angry that it woke him up, regardless of what it was. "Pretty sure it's your fucking dad fucking with me."

Odin refuses to so much as send a lightning bolt Nick's way, still sulking at Nick's supposed abandonment even thousands of years later, yet it’s obvious that he’s sure Nick will come to his senses one day, except that's never going to happen — not least because Nick isn’t exactly itching to bring on Ragnarök — so Odin focuses his wrath on Alex instead, in the hopes that Alex will be the one to tell Nick to find reason and return home, as if Alex has ever been any less stubborn than Nick.

"Sorry," Nick says. There's nothing more for him to say, so he runs his hands up and down the length of Alex's back, trying to give him some measure of comfort, to make up for the fact that Nick's dad is a passive-aggressive asshole.

Alex shrugs, the motion forcing a bit of air from Nick's lungs. "Is whatever." They stay like that, breathing and staring out into the dark. "I know who win Winter Classic, though," Alex says, eventually.

"What? For how long?"

"A month," Alex admits, and Nick digs his fingers into the tattoos on either side of Alex's lower back, because what the fuck. Alex carries on, hissing, "We win; want to keep secret. You always mad about _spoilers_!" Alex says the word like it's the stupidest thing he's ever heard, like he's taken account of each and every single word ever uttered since language came to be, and found _spoiler_ to be the worst of the lot.

They've had this debate thousands of times; it started when the printing press was invented and has only grown worse with the rise of television and film. Whenever Alex learns something, he always wants to share it with Nick, right away, which usually means that the surprise is ruined for Nick. This, however, is decidedly not _that_.

"It's not a spoiler if it's our lives," Nick says, pinching hard at Alex's sides and not letting him squirm away from the pain. "Do I get a goal, at least?"

"I get goal and assist," Alex says, voice full of pride. Nick can feel Alex's grin against his chest, teeth pressing into Nick's skin. "You get holding penalty."

Nick groans. "What the fuck."

 

⌁

 

Alex and Nick first met not long after Nick's death.

"How could they leave a sweet thing like you to rot in a place like this?" Alex had asked, though then he'd been known by a different name — _Nick_ had been known by a different name — he introduced himself as Alexander all the same; a stranger in a far off land could be whoever they wanted to be, and Alex's first act of rebellion had been casting off the name Perun had lazily assigned him with.

Nick had been his second.

"Make a deal with me," Alex had said, not even bothering to phrase it like a request, and Nick hadn't minded that at all. "Let's tie our souls together, so that you can live again."

He'd been just as shameless then, too, crowding his way into Nick's space, so close that their noses brushed, and the thing inside of Nick that had always felt so empty suddenly didn't seem so fathomless anymore. Nick had felt hope welling up inside of him, even as he asked the question he least wanted to know the answer to, "Aren't you tied to someone already?"

"Not bonded away yet. Why should we wait?" Alex dipped his head in, voice low, ghosting in hot gusts across Nick's pallor cheeks. "No one will ever be able to split us apart," Alex had promised, with a smile that was sharp, greedy, the sort of thing that would catch your eye from across the room, as loud as an expression could be without making any sound at all; a mirror image spread itself across Nick's face, soft, kind, the sort of thing you'd miss at first glance, though your eyes would be drawn back to it all the same, an innocence you'd give your life to protect.

After that, their acts of rebellion had come in sets of twos, so intertwined that they were regarded as one.

**Author's Note:**

> your prompt was open ended and i wound up writing two stories! lol whoops. i probably could have drawn this out _way_ too long, but for both our sakes i chose to take the smarter, better path and reined myself in from a tl;dr mess. 
> 
> this is the bastardized result of a nostalgia-fueled, impromptu _black & white_ replay. somehow i got it in my mind to muss about with soulbond inversions that dealt with gods from different mythos' breaking all the rules by running off to be with their other-religion counterparts; thereby having ovi choosing a bond over his 'intended' soulmate, and nick gets into a bond even though he's not supposed to have one at all! — because that's a totally normal trope that actually exists in the first place and everyone wants to read about ahahahahaha ~~right? bueller?!~~ blame pената for not telling me to delete this from the moment i started typing.


End file.
